Inside the asteroid belt
NASA’s Dawn mission explored the rocky worlds of Vesta and Ceres
By getting up close to asteroid 4 Vesta, the Dawn mission unlocked clues about the early years of the Solar System.
NASA launched the Dawn mission in 2007 with the aim of finding out more about Vesta and Ceres. These two large asteroid belt objects were chosen because they were already known to be very different from one another. Together, they represent the materials that existed at the beginning of our Solar System (in the first 10 million years or so). While Vesta is similar to the rocky worlds of the inner Solar System, Ceres shares more in common with the icy moons of the outer Solar System. By studying the geology and composition of both, we can learn not only about our asteroid belt, but about Solar System’s origins.
Dawn reached Vesta first, in July 2011, and began its orbit of the giant asteroid. It found that Vesta has two large impact basins and linked some of the debris from those impacts with meteorites found on Earth. Dawn also mapped Vesta’s geology, composition and cratering record and took readings that could help us understand the asteroid’s internal structure. After orbiting Vesta for over a year, Dawn moved on to Ceres, orbiting the dwarf planet in 2015. The mission officially ended in October 2018.